What level is Junior Data Engineer at Amazon?

On Amazon's ladder, Junior Data Engineer sits at L4. Expectations center on foundational SQL fluency and a willingness to learn production systems.

How much does a Amazon Junior Data Engineer in London make?

Total compensation for Amazon Junior Data Engineer in London ranges $81K–$104K base • $111K–$143K total (L4). Ranges shift by team and negotiation.

Does Amazon actually hire data engineers in London?

Yes, Amazon maintains a London office and hires Junior Data Engineer data engineers there. Team assignment may be office-locked or global; confirm with the recruiter before the loop.

How long should I prepare for the Amazon Junior Data Engineer interview?

6-8 weeks of focused prep is typical for candidates already working as a DE. Less than 4 weeks is tight; the behavioral story bank usually takes longer than candidates expect.

Does Amazon interview data engineers differently than software engineers?

Yes. DE loops at Amazon weight SQL heavier, include pipeline/system-design rounds tuned to data workloads, and probe for production data experience (ingestion patterns, data quality, backfill) that generalist SWE loops skip.

Interview Guide

Amazon Junior Data Engineer Interview in London (L4)

Q: How is the Junior Data Engineer loop different from other levels at Amazon?

Round structure is shared across levels; what changes is what each round tests. For Junior Data Engineer the emphasis is foundational SQL fluency and a willingness to learn production systems, with particular attention to SQL fundamentals, learning orientation, and basic pipeline awareness.

At Amazon, the (L4) Junior Data Engineer interview is characterized by Leadership Principles woven into every round, with a Bar Raiser holding veto power. To clear this bar you need foundational SQL fluency and a willingness to learn production systems, built on 0-2 years of production DE work. Below we dig into how this runs out of the London office (London, UK), with cost-of-living-adjusted compensation.

Compensation

$81K–$104K base • $111K–$143K total (L4)

Loop duration

3.8 hours onsite

Rounds

5 rounds

Location

London, UK

Practice problems

Amazon junior data engineer practice set

4 problems

Problems the Amazon junior data engineer loop tends to ask, surfaced from signals in current job descriptions. Click any to start practicing.

SQLmedium~10 min

Selling Where Nobody Lives

The logistics team noticed orders shipping to broad regions (orders.region, e.g. 'EU', 'APAC') that don't line up with any country we have on file for customers (customers.country). Count the number of distinct order regions that do NOT appear as any customer's country. Return a single number as cross_region_count.

Open in practice environment→

Pythonhard~5 min

Data Quality Report

Given a list of record dicts, return a dict per column name with 'null_count' and 'non_null_count'. Consider a value null when it is Python None.

Open in practice environment→

Modelingeasy~15 min

B2B Invoicing Data Model

We're a B2B SaaS company that bills customers monthly. Each invoice has a header with customer info and billing period, plus variable line items for subscription tiers, usage overages, and one-time charges. Finance needs to reconcile payments against invoices and track outstanding AR by customer. Design the data model.

Open in practice environment→

SQLmedium~5 min

Active Duo

The growth team is building a cross-engagement segment of users who both make purchases and log browsing sessions on the platform. Return a deduplicated list of usernames for users with activity in both areas.

Open in practice environment→

Top 2 sellers by revenue in each marketplace

Classic DE round opener. Window function + partition. Edit to tweak the threshold.

1	WITH seller_totals AS (
2	SELECT
3	marketplace,
4	seller_id,
5	SUM(amount) AS revenue
6	FROM seller_orders
7	GROUP BY marketplace, seller_id
8	),
9	ranked AS (
10	SELECT
11	marketplace,
12	seller_id,
13	revenue,
14	DENSE_RANK() OVER (
15	PARTITION BY marketplace
16	ORDER BY revenue DESC
17	) AS rk
18	FROM seller_totals
19	)
20
21	SELECT
22	marketplace,
23	seller_id,
24	revenue
25	FROM ranked
26	WHERE rk <= 2
27	ORDER BY marketplace, revenue DESC

Prepare for the interview

01 / Open invite

02min.

Walk into Amazon knowing the system design pattern they'll test.

a Amazon system design query, the same shape a screen would give you.

The diff against expected. Where ties broke. What you missed.

sandbox

1source → bronze → silver → gold

2 ingest : CDC + Kafka

3 transform : dbt + Airflow

4 serve : Snowflake

Execute your solution0.4s avg.

AmazonInterview question

Solve a Amazon problem

London, UK

Amazon in London

Largest European DE market. Comp is materially lower than US metros but higher than anywhere else in Europe. Visa sponsorship is routine for senior roles.

Amazon pays about 35% less in London than its reference band; this maps to local market compensation norms. Amazon sponsors visas for junior data engineer hires in London as a matter of course. The interview loop itself is identical to Amazon's global process in London; local variation shows up in team and compensation.

Prepare for the interview

03 / From the bank03 of many

03hand-picked.

Five Years of Cron Jobs

Hard10 min

Half the jobs run on cron. Half run on events. All of it has to move.

Open the sandbox

Pick your level

AmazonL3The Bucket Full of Resumes NetflixL4The Clicks We Throw Away AirbnbL5The Clock That Runs Two Ways

Pulled from debriefs where system design separated levels.

The loop

How the interview actually runs

01Recruiter screen

30 min

Logistics, team fit, and a light Leadership Principle question. Recruiters confirm seniority expectations before booking the loop. Misalignment here can downlevel the loop.

→Have a 60-second pitch that names 2-3 concrete data systems you've built
→Confirm the team. Amazon has hundreds of DE teams across AWS, Retail, Ads, Alexa, Prime Video, Pharmacy
→Ask about the comp band early to avoid end-of-loop misalignment

02Technical phone screen

60 min

One SQL problem, one Python or pipeline design problem, and 10-15 min of Leadership Principle questions. The SQL is harder than the Online Assessment, expect multi-step window functions or self-joins.

→Narrate approach before writing code. Amazon grades process, not just the final answer
→Name the LP before telling the story
→Prepare at least 2 stories per LP; follow-ups probe a third story on the same theme

03Onsite: SQL deep-dive

60 min

Two to three SQL problems with escalating difficulty, usually in Amazon contexts (seller performance, order fulfillment, inventory). Ends with 10 min of LP questions.

→Practice window functions across large partition cardinalities
→Be ready to rewrite correlated subqueries as joins and vice versa
→When asked about optimization, mention partition pruning and columnar storage

04Onsite: Bar Raiser

60 min

An interviewer from outside the hiring team with veto power. Heaviest on Leadership Principles, with one harder technical problem. Tests whether you raise Amazon's hiring bar.

→Bring a story where you were wrong and had to change course
→Quantify impact: cost saved, latency reduced, users affected
→If you don't know something, say so. Fabricating kills the loop faster than any technical gap

Level bar

What Amazon expects at Junior Data Engineer

SQL foundations

Junior rounds weight SQL the heaviest. Expect multi-table joins, aggregations, window functions, and one harder query involving self-joins or recursive CTEs. You do not need to design systems at this level, but you do need SQL to be reflexive.

Learning orientation

Interviewers probe how you pick up new tools. A strong story about learning a new stack in a prior role (even an internship or side project) can outweigh gaps in production experience.

Basic pipeline awareness

You should know what ETL vs ELT means, what a data warehouse is, and why idempotency matters, even if you have not built a production pipeline yourself.

Amazon-specific emphasis

Amazon's loop is characterized by: Leadership Principles woven into every round, with a Bar Raiser holding veto power. Calibrate your preparation to that, generic FAANG prep will not close the gap on company-specific expectations.

Behavioral

How Amazon frames behavioral rounds

Dive Deep

The most relevant LP for data engineers. Amazon wants DEs who trace anomalies through 3+ layers of the stack instead of patching symptoms.

“Tell me about a time you found a data quality issue that others had missed.”

Ownership

You built it, you own it, including on-call and long-term maintenance. Ownership extends beyond your explicit scope when dependencies break.

“Describe a situation where you went beyond your role to solve a problem.”

Bias for Action

Speed beats perfection. Amazon wants DEs who ship V1 in 2 weeks rather than a perfect solution in 3 months.

“Tell me about a time you made a decision without having all the information.”

Earn Trust

Trust comes from delivery and transparency. Bar Raisers test whether you can admit mistakes and communicate setbacks without spinning.

“Tell me about a time you delivered bad news to a stakeholder.”

Prep timeline

Week-by-week preparation plan

8 weeks out

Foundations and gap analysis

·Do 10 medium SQL problems. Note which patterns feel slow
·Write out 2-3 behavioral stories per value, Amazon weights this round heavily
·Read Amazon's public engineering blog for recent architecture patterns
·Shore up data engineering foundations: SQL, Python, one warehouse (Snowflake/BigQuery/Redshift)

6 weeks out

SQL and coding fluency

·Practice window functions until DENSE_RANK, ROW_NUMBER, LAG, LEAD are reflex
·Do 20+ Amazon-style problems in their domain
·Time yourself: 25 min per medium, 35 min per hard
·Record yourself narrating approach aloud, communication is graded

4 weeks out

Pipeline awareness and behavioral depth

·Review pipeline architecture basics: idempotency, partitioning, backfill
·Practice explaining a pipeline you've worked on end-to-end in 5 minutes
·Refine behavioral stories based on mock feedback
·Do 10 more SQL problems at medium difficulty

2 weeks out

Behavioral polish and mock loops

·Rehearse every story out loud. Cut to 2-3 minutes each
·Run 2 full mock loops with a mid-level DE or coach
·Identify your 3 weakest behavioral areas and draft additional stories
·Review recent Amazon news or earnings call for fresh talking points

Week of

Taper and logistics

·No new content. Review your notes only
·Sleep. Mental energy matters more than one more practice problem
·Confirm logistics: laptop charged, shared-doc tool tested, snack and water nearby
·Remember: interviewers want to find reasons to hire you, not to reject you

Related pages on Amazon's loop

Amazon Junior Data Engineer (global guide)→Amazon Junior Data Engineer in Seattle→Amazon Data Engineer Salary→Amazon Interview Guide→Data Engineer Interview Prep (hub)→

FAQ

Common questions

What level is Junior Data Engineer at Amazon?: On Amazon's ladder, Junior Data Engineer sits at L4. Expectations center on foundational SQL fluency and a willingness to learn production systems.
How much does a Amazon Junior Data Engineer in London make?: Total compensation for Amazon Junior Data Engineer in London ranges $81K–$104K base • $111K–$143K total (L4). Ranges shift by team and negotiation.
Does Amazon actually hire data engineers in London?: Yes, Amazon maintains a London office and hires Junior Data Engineer data engineers there. Team assignment may be office-locked or global; confirm with the recruiter before the loop.
How is the Junior Data Engineer loop different from other levels at Amazon?: Round structure is shared across levels; what changes is what each round tests. For Junior Data Engineer the emphasis is foundational SQL fluency and a willingness to learn production systems, with particular attention to SQL fundamentals, learning orientation, and basic pipeline awareness.
How long should I prepare for the Amazon Junior Data Engineer interview?: 6-8 weeks of focused prep is typical for candidates already working as a DE. Less than 4 weeks is tight; the behavioral story bank usually takes longer than candidates expect.
Does Amazon interview data engineers differently than software engineers?: Yes. DE loops at Amazon weight SQL heavier, include pipeline/system-design rounds tuned to data workloads, and probe for production data experience (ingestion patterns, data quality, backfill) that generalist SWE loops skip.